Around District 11 with Pam and Guy: One More Time
Tagged under: District 11, District 2, Gameday Hub, News, pfn
Guy Smith | August 26, 2025
We went back and forth during spring and summer as to whether or not we wanted to continue to write the weekly blog for PA Football News this fall, but after doing it four years, five seemed a nice round number so with the blessing of the boss Billy Splain (Rock on, brother!), whom we greatly admire, we are back for what is likely the last go-round.
Guy has been attending the races at the Mahoning Valley Speedway in Lehighton since 1973. In this century, it’s usually only been two or three times a year. But with the property now for sale and a realistic possibility that if sold, the land would be used for a purpose other than a race track, Guy decided to run the table and attend the last ten Saturday races for the season. That does affect our football schedule, as the final six races at the track overlap the high school season. But if we can’t do Saturday evening football, that still leaves us Thursday, Friday, Saturday afternoon, Sunday, and Monday.
Spring Football. We only went to seven football games in the spring this year. Cutting back on GEFA, we still went to see six games, one each for the three teams added this season: Central PA Legends, Lehigh Valley Wolves, and the Mifflin County Tomahawks. In addition, we went to three games for the new GEFA2 developmental league: Electric City Shock, Wilkes Barre Raiders, and the Tomahawks, who fielded a team in both classifications. The only other spring game we attended was Big 33.
PA Football News Preseason Polls. District 11 or related teams were represented in all six classifications of the preseason poll. 1A) Lackawanna Trail is a District 2 team, but combined with District 11 for the playoffs. Rank-4. 2A) Schuylkill Haven: Rank-3. Williams Valley: Rank-4. 3) Northwestern Lehigh: Rank-1. Notre Dame: Rank 4. 4A) Southern Lehigh: Rank-3. 5A) Whitehall: Rank-HM 6A) Parkland: Rank-6. Emmaus: Rank-HM. Nazareth: Rank-HM. Of those ten teams, nine won on opening weekend, with Emmaus the only one of the ten going down in defeat, a surprising 30-0 shutout loss to unranked Neshaminy.
Where Do We Go From Here? In the past four years, we have visited all 47 District 11 schools for games, 7 District 11 teams where the JV team played on a different field than the varsity, all nine schools that subregioned with D11 for district playoffs during that time (Pam missed Holy Cross), three other D11 “related fields,” six all-star games with D11 players, 11 neutral fields for state playoff games with D11 teams (Pam missing five). Last year for the first time we tested the waters in attending regular season games where D11 teams were playing outside the district, heading to Columbia Montour Vo-Tech to see Shenandoah Valley, and Central Columbia to see Executive Education. We will explore more new high school venues like that this year.
We’ll also throw in some college games when possible. However, the main college goal, to see all the D2 PSAC schools and related teams play at home is on hold, as those yet to visit are too far to make it back for those evening races at Mahoning Valley. We have 11 so far; hopefully we can add one or two this year. Otherwise, we will get more creative with some more local college teams, especially those never visited.
The Coin Toss. For the ten weeks of the regular season, Pam and Guy take turns picking the Friday night game we attend. For the second year in a row Pam won the toss, and again elected to defer, giving her the picks on the 2-4-6-8-10th weekends. However, Guy really wanted the 2nd weekend pick, and traded Pam for the pick, offering three dinner choices, two movie picks, and a winter sporting event to be named later.
District 11 vs. the State. Of the 47 schools in District 11 offering varsity football, 29 of them opened with games from teams outside the district. Our teams did well, winning over two-thirds of the games, 20 of 29. Nice work.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 22. MINERSVILLE BATTLIN’ MINERS (2A) @ HALIFAX WILDCATS (2A). GRASS. There were several choices of D11 teams playing out of the district at schools we had never visited, and we settled on this game as our choice (Guy’s pick). Our friend Don joins us at many of the games, and he lives in the Lancaster area. Don coached one season at Halifax in the early 1990s, and the game marked his first time back since then.
Admission was just $3, and Guy, now 65+, took advantage of the free senior admission offer. We were impressed at how organized the parking was, with spaces lined off and multiple parking attendants directing. A very good crowd was on hand, basically filling the stands on both sides of the grass field.
A huge pleasant surprise was seeing the Williams French Fries truck. Williams is our absolute favorite of any of the fresh cut trucks found at D11 schools. In our district, they can be found at Pine Grove, Williams Valley, and Tri Valley. It was great to see them here. It will be hard for any school to wrestle the “King Tater” crown from them.
The Miners won the game 35-13 behind the arm and legs of QB Dante Carr. Looking more like a college linebacker than a high school quarterback, Carr is the real deal, committed to NCAA D1 UCF. Carr accounted for all four offensive touchdowns, throwing for two and running for two. The Miners first score was a pick six on Halifax’s first possession.
We may be biased, but the game did not appear as close as the final score appears. The two Halifax TDs were on a mini-Hail Mary on the last play of the half, and a similar scramble on fourth and goal from the 16. Halifax is coming off a 0-10 season where they only scored more than eight points in one game, and in that one they were Mercy Ruled 59-13. Matching the previous season high in the opener is a good sign. The fact that a team with that level of success still filled their side stands says good things about the school and community support. Pam and Guy very much enjoyed our first-time visit to this school.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 23. DOWNINGTOWN WEST WHIPPETS (6A) @ BETHLEHEM FREEDOM PATRIOTS (6A). TURF. With Guy’s commitment to Mahoning Valley in the evening, we needed an afternoon game. And Freedom, where Guy taught for just shy of 30 years, was playing at noon. Afternoon home games are few and far between for the Pates. For opening weekend, all three Bethlehem schools that play in the BASD Stadium were home. Liberty had Friday, and both Freedom and Becahi were home Saturday. Usually that means Becahi in the afternoon and Freedom in the evening. Guy was told that Coach Roeder wanted the early afternoon game. Not sure why.
BASD Stadium (at least for the public-school games) is getting to be almost more hassle than it’s worth. They invoke size and transparency bag restrictions and don’t accept cash, forcing people to pay an online ticketing fee in addition to the admission, which was already double from the night before even without the tacked-on fee. Surprisingly, they did offer the free admission for seniors 65+, and Guy was able to take advantage for the second straight day.
BASD is not a good refreshment stand stadium. Fry truck? No more. Ice cream truck? No more. Nut stand? No more. Hot food choices are very limited, although Guy is very fond of the pork barbeque sandwiches there. Pam said she would rather wait until after the game when we could stop for tacos in Northampton before heading to the races.
Shout out to the Freedom Patriot Marching Band, not as large as it once was, but still one of the best in the area. Also a tip of the visor to the Pate cheerleaders, a huge group that did a lot more cheering than the squad the night before.
The Pates have gone from a perennial losing record school during the first half of Guy’s time teaching there into a perennial EPC contender under Jason Roeder, a teacher at the school. Coach Roeder is now in his 21st year leading the program. Before Roeder, the school had never won a district playoff game. They now have 19 wins plus five championships. Guy can attest that Roeder is a good guy and an honorable man.
This was the first time these two schools have ever met in football. Small crowd. Freedom got off to a good start and led 7-0 at the end of the first quarter. But they got hurt by drive-killing penalties and drops on offense, plus drive-extending penalties on defense. Still, it took Downingtown until 4th and goal to score their lone first-half touchdown, and the Pates were in it at halftime only down 13-7.
Very nice to have PA Football News colleague Ryan Scipio come up in the stands to visit with us during the halftime break. Another good guy.
The second half was another story. Getting the ball first, a Freedom-thrown pick six made the score 20-7 and the Pates never recovered, either physically or mentally. From the stands, the Pates seemed to lose focus and intensity. Where was the senior leadership yelling encouragement to the players? We can’t say they were just going through the motions, but the fact is they scored first and then gave up 47 straight points to get Mercy Ruled 47-7. It won’t be easy to bounce back quickly from this one, especially with state-ranked Parkland up just six days later.
MONDAY, AUGUST 25. STROUDSBURG MOUNTAINEERS (JV) @ WALLENPAUPACK BUCKHORNS (JV). TURF. Of all the D11 JV games in the first week of the JV season, we picked this one as this was our chance to visit a new school outside the district.
Wallenpaupack is in District 2. Since both Pam and Guy grew up in the Lehigh Valley, even when we moved to the Pocono Mountains, we still mostly headed south, back to the Valley, for our high school football.
However, since starting the blog five years ago and trying to visit any school with a connection to District 11, we have already visited 1/3rd of the District 2 schools for games. Eight are schools that subregioned with D11 for district playoffs. One was a team where a D11 team played a D2 team at the D2 home for the playoffs (Whitehall @ Delaware Valley). One we visited when we were in the area and anxious to find any game we could make by start time (North Pocono). And this one was a JV game. That’s 11 of the 33 schools. We are guessing that someday we will visit them all. In addition to those 11 schools for Guy (Pam missed two), there have also been trips to Berwick and Dunmore for neutral field state playoff games involving a D11 team but not the team from those schools. Oh yeah, a number of years ago, before the “blog era,” we saw Holy Redeemer play at King’s College.
We had actually had been to Wallenpaupack once before, in 2019. That was for a summer wood bat baseball game for the Northeast Pride of the Hudson Valley Collegiate Baseball League on a very hot summer day. But we had not seen the football stadium.
The game was originally set for 5:30 following the freshman game, but Wallenpaupack cancelled their entire freshman season, and the JV game was moved up to 4:00. The school listed the game at the school as being at the “Football Field,” when all the rest of the home JV games are listed as being at the “Stadium Turf.” An inquiry to the school for clarification of the difference went unanswered. Apparently there is no difference since they played in the stadium. Why they labeled it differently remains a mystery.
The stadium is in a beautiful setting. All the stands are on the home side and Lake Wallenpaupack is just on the other side of the track surrounding the field. They must not get big crowds for their games, as for being a 4A school there are not a lot of seats, and both sides supporters have to sit on the one side.
Admission was free for all, but the game turned out to be more of a scrimmage than a game, despite the fact that Wallenpaupack did not mark it as such on their schedule. Not sure if we would have picked this game if they had. During the scrimmage portion Stroudsburg took it to them, scoring three touchdowns to none for Wallenpaupack. But during the shortened game when they used the scoreboard, Wallenpaupack took it to Stroudsburg, scoring twice, one on defense with a 90-yard pick six and the other on offense. They missed both two-point conversion tries. When the scoreboard clock reached zero, it was Buckhorns on top 12-0.
Guy is hopping on his Soap Box for a minute here. I know that in the past 50 years, kids have changed, schools have changed, heck the world has changed. But…when I was in 10th grade, the JV games were “our” season. Those were “our” games. We looked forward to each and every one. Played our hearts out. Had fun. Had “our” games been turned into controlled scrimmages and shortened “game situations,” we would have not been happy. As 15- and 16-year-olds, we signed up to play football, and the JV games were our chance. As a 10th grader, I got in one play of one varsity game. But on JV game day it was a different story. The kids practice every other day. It saddens me when they turn game day for the underclassman kids, those that don’t get varsity playing time, into a glorified extra practice day. As Bad News Bears Coach Leak so eloquently said: “Let them play!” Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Horizon. Looking at Thursday, Friday and Saturday games this coming weekend. All three first-time visits for us.
2025 District 11 Teams Seen Play at Home or Outside D11. 1. Minersville Battlin’ Miners. 2) Freedom Patriots. 3) Stroudsburg Mountaineers.
Follow PA Football News on Twitter @PaFootballNews
